By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh
While local jobs on the whole are far behind pre-COVID levels, the tech sector is rising above.
As reported by Crain’s NY, New York City has recovered just around half, or 421,000, of all the jobs lost since the pandemic hit. Local tech jobs, however, are up roughly 5% over pre-pandemic levels. On Thursday, industry experts attended a virtual panel to discuss how New Yorkers can tap into the tech opportunities. “We won’t get back all of those lost face-to-face industry jobs,” said James Parrott, presenter at the panel and director of economic and fiscal policies at The New School. “At the same time, we’ve seen the economic changes that have increased the importance of tech.” For now, the tech job market is dominated predominantly by White males but opening more pathways to these jobs would potentially help bring about local economic recovery while simultaneously adding diversity to the tech workforce, says Parrott.
Former Mayors Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio previously recognized the tech potential and initiated policies to assist more New Yorkers in joining the booming industry. Mayor Eric Adams, too recognizes this as part of his strategy and has named Maria Torres-Springer as deputy mayor for economic and workforce development. She had previously spearheaded the de Blasio administration’s Tech Talent Pipeline training initiative.
On Thursday, The NYC Employment and Training Coalition, a membership group for jobs-training organizations, asked experts for advice on how people can prepare to enter the tech industry. Sometimes the focus for tech jobs can be on learning coding languages, but these skill requirements are fluid, changing often, explained Bethany Crystal, a vice president at Bolster, an online executive talent marketplace. “The best students I see are the ones that know how to learn outside the classroom, are curious and can teach themselves,” Crystal said. Often the job listings will include a long list of required programming languages, but Crystal advises not to lose heart and apply anyways, as rarely do applicants meet all the criteria.
As per Crain’s, Angela Pinksy, head of government affairs and public policy at Google New York, said job-training programs which focus on projects are often the best in supporting tech careers. Also, engineering skills like coding are not the only pathways into the industry. Other storytelling and negotiating skills are going to come in handy, the panelists agreed.
“Just like any other tech company, large or small, only about half of the jobs at tech startups are engineering,” Crystal said. “There’s lots and lots of opportunities to bring yourself into middle-income, career-driven pathways by starting in entry-level sales, marketing, HR support.”
